sexta-feira, 30 de março de 2012

Class Dismissed : How TV Frames the Working Class [Full Film]

Based on the forthcoming book by Pepi Leistyna, Class Dismissed
navigates the steady stream of narrow working class representations from
American television's beginnings to today's sitcoms, reality shows,
police dramas, and daytime talk shows.

Featuring interviews with media analysts and cultural historians, this
documentary examines the patterns inherent in TV's disturbing depictions
of working class people as either clowns or social deviants --
stereotypical portrayals that reinforce the myth of meritocracy.

Class Dismissed breaks important new ground in exploring the ways
in which race, gender, and sexuality intersect with class, offering a
more complex reading of television's often one-dimensional
representations. The video also links television portrayals to negative
cultural attitudes and public policies that directly affect the lives of
working class people.

"How the Media Frames Political Issues" by Scott London

In The Emergence of American Political Issues (1977) McCombs and Shaw state that the most important effect of the mass media is "its ability to mentally order and organize our world for us. In short, the mass media may not be successful in telling us what to think, but they are stunningly successful in telling us what to think about."[13] The presidential observer Theodore White corroborates this conclusion in The Making of a President (1972):

The power of the press in America is a primordial one. It sets the agenda of public discussion; and this sweeping political power is unrestrained by any law. It determines what people will talk and think about - an authority that in other nations is reserved for tyrants, priests, parties and mandarins.[14]

McCombs and Shaw also note that the media's tendency to structure voters' perceptions of political reality in effect constitutes a bias: "to a considerable degree the art of politics in a democracy is the art of determining which issue dimensions are of major interest to the public or can be made salient in order to win public support."[15]http://www.scottlondon.com/reports/frames.html